A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Thomas and Judith Melly pledged $70 million to launch an endowed fund that will support up to 100 scholarships of $10,000 each year, establish the Melly Strategic Innovation Fund so that the colleges’ leaders can address immediate campus needs, and create the Melly Institute for Business, Innovation and Leadership.
Thomas Melly, who died late last year, was a financier and retired in 1984 as a partner at Goldman Sachs, where he led the investment firm’s floor-trading operations. Before joining Goldman Sachs in 1968, he worked as a stock broker at De Coppet & Doremus, a long-gone New York investment firm, and held posts at American Cyanamid and General Reinsurance Corporation.
He grew up in New York during the Great Depression and cited his father’s seven years of unemployment and his mother’s death when he was 11 as important influences on his life. He earned an economics degree from Hobart in 1952, and then served in the U.S. Marine Corps during the Korean War, attaining the rank of First Lieutenant. He later earned an MBA from New York University Stern School of Business. Thomas Melly was 94 when he died in December.
Kathy Crawford gave $30 million to establish the Crawford Wildlife Habitat Scholarships fund, which will provide financial aid to undergraduate and graduate students from multiple fields of study who are interested in conducting research, educational, or creative efforts that focus on conserving wildlife habitat.
Crawford is a former professor in the university’s Earth Sciences Department. She said in a news release that she is establishing the scholarship fund in honor of her late husband, Thomas (Tim) Crawford, a Bozeman, Mont., businessman who grew up in a ranching family in California and worked as a young man for the U.S. Forest Service, in Alaska. He died in 2022 at 82.
United States Naval Academy Alumni Association and Foundation
Michael Wilson Taylor pledged $15 million to endow academic programs and support daily operations at the academy’s Fluegel Alumni Center, in Annapolis, Md.
Taylor earned a bachelor’s degree from the military academy in 1986 and served as a pilot and Lt. Commander in the U.S. Navy. He earned an MBA in finance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1995 and worked for several years with Morgan Stanley’s investment banking division. In 1998, he joined HarbourVest, a global private markets firm, where he is a senior advisor.
Richard and Stacie Stephenson and their family gave $14.7 million to support the Stephenson Institute for Classical Liberalism, which the couple established with a $10.6 million gift in 2021. The Institute hosts public presentations, workshops, seminars, and programs for Wabash students.
Richard Stephenson founded Cancer Treatment Centers of America, a Boca Raton, Fla., group of cancer care and research centers that was acquired by City of Hope in 2022. He graduated from Wabash in 1962 and later founded International Capital Investment Company, a private investment company in Schaumburg, Ill. Stacie Stephenson is a chiropractor and nutrition specialist who writes about health and wellness.
University of Missouri School of Journalism
Jonathan Murray gave $10.3 million to the Jonathan B. Murray Center for Documentary Journalism to expand professional and educational programs available to undergraduate and graduate students and make filmmaking resources available to the center’s alumni.
Murray, who gave $6.7 million in 2014 to establish the center, co-founded Bunim-Murray Productions, an entertainment production company that popularized the reality television genre with shows such as “The Real World,” “Project Runway,” and “Keeping up with the Kardashians,” and operates BMP Films, a documentary film producer. Murray earned a journalism degree from the university in 1977.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.
